I have loved movies ever since I was a child and escaped to the Palace Theater in my home town Saturday afternoons for cartoons, an adventure serial and a double feature, all for a quarter.
There has hardly been a week in my life, except when my son was a baby, that I didn’t see at least one movie.
As I age, I find fewer and fewer films appeal to me. It seems Hollywood puts most of its money on the demographic providing the highest profit -- the adolescent male.
I did watch the Academy Awards this year, something I very seldom do. You might ask why, if I'm such a fan of films, why I pay little attention to the movie awards? The answer is simple: one, I find the Academy Award’s show boring; and two, too many of the presenters and award winners are so “full of themselves” that I am embarrassed for them.
This leads me to reflect on poet John O’Donohue's observation in his book, 'Divine Beauty.' Too often in our culture we mistake glamour for beauty. True Beauty is divine, O'Donohue suggests, because it entices us beyond ourselves to be engaged with the sublimely infinite aspects of reality. By beauty we are humbled and we experience awe. Beauty is always just slightly out of our grasp. It cannot be contained and it calls us beyond our limitations.
Glamour is just the opposite. Glamour suggests it is within our grasp and if we would just act a certain way, believe a certain way, consume a certain way, or hitch ourselves to some glamorous star, glamour can be ours.
Beauty is beautiful from deep within. Glamour is cosmetic and it covers up what is ugly and parades it to the world disguised as beauty.
It is the glamour of the Academy Awards which makes me feel sad. Beauty, does sometimes does show her face, but too often is absent from the award’s ceremony.
On the positive side, the awards do reveal something of the culture that longs for the glamour; and a critical eye might see just how the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly are a part of who we are. These attributes are disclosed in the movies and the awards that celebrate them.
The Good: Much good work was celebrated at the Academy Awards. Excellence in acting, directing, producing and in all the various artistic and technological areas of movie-making were awarded. It would have been good, though, if the award show offered some explanation as to why certain winners were honored.
If the work is good, we ought to at least be shown why. Knowing why and how would make the viewer and the culture more knowledgeable and that would lead us all to better judge a work’s quality. Instead, we experience the academy’s judgments as totally subjective and even arbitrary. We are left to judge artistic merit totally by our feelings: if I like it it’s good and if I don’t, it isn’t. My opinion is just as good as yours.
The Bad: Perhaps what is really bad at the Academy Awards is “bad behavior.” It was a minor incident. One award winner was not able to show excitement and offers thanks without using the “f” word. I have served in the military and I have lived in the world. I am not a prude. I realize foul language is common. I also realize there are times when a powerful word is necessary.
What is bad, though, is when such words are used indiscriminately and only express disrespect for one’s self and for others. The award winner who indiscriminately expressed the four-letter-word offered an apology saying that there was no intention to offended others.
The apology was tempered with the excuse it was just a natural part of the actor’s vocabulary. Too bad. The problem isn’t offence, it is disrespect. Indiscriminate foul language isn’t that it offends. It is that it is disrespectful; and respect, along with trust, is what makes civilization possible.
The Beautiful: There were several expressions of beauty in the midst of all the glamour. One of the most beautiful expressions was that of David Siedler, the screenwriter for “The King’s Speech.” Mr. Siedler was a stutterer as was King George the VI, the subject of the film. Before going forward with the project in 1982, Mr. Siedler contacted the Queen Mother, King George’s widow, to ask for her permission. The Queen Mother gave her permission, but asked he wait until after her death. Twenty years later, the Queen Mother died at age 102.
In 2005, having struggled with cancer of the throat, which focused Mr. Seidler’s attention on the needs of communication, he returned to the King’s Speech project.
While the film was technically and artisticly excellence, the insight into Mr. Seidler’s patience made it beautiful. Out of respect, Mr. Seidler put aside his desire to make the film in 1982. His patience inspires patience in us all.
After all, it is patience which allows for a natural unfolding, like that of a flower which opens to the sun when the time is right.
The Ugly: If an unintentional expression of disrespect indicates something bad, then an intentional expression of disrespect is truly ugly.
If beauty draws out of us a deep respect for others along with a sense of patience, the ugly calls us to put aside patience for immediate gratification even if it is disrespectful to others.
I cannot say that any film or actor participating or honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures expressed ugliness. Yet the ugly provides financial rewards for the industry that the Academy honors.
At local movie houses across the country, often only the Academy Award winners which are profitable are screened. Many excellent, informative, and even beautiful films have only a limited showing, or no showing at all.
The multiplex screens are saturated with adolescent male sexploitation films and gruesomely bloody horror flicks. These films entertain the basest of human instincts, and do so by disrespecting what are humanity’s greatest values. These films dominate because they appeal to the lowest common denominator, and they make money.
The word 'entertainment' literally means to take some image within (entre) and hold it(tenir) there. What we allow in, affects what and who we become. If the ugly is our entertainment, our lives will become ugly as well. As our lives become ugly, so does our world. Through the prism of an ugly heart, beauty becomes less and less visible, and where it is seen, it is ridiculed.
